From WHAT THE LIGHT TEACHES

Language is the house with lamplight in its windows,

visible across fields. Approaching, you can hear

music; closer, smell

soup, bay leaves, bread - a meal for anyone

who has only his tongue left.

It's a country; home, family;

abandoned, burned down; whole lines dead, unmarried.

For those who can't read their way in the streets,

or in the gestures and faces of strangers,

language is the house to run to;

in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds,

when you've been lost a long time,

when you have no other place.

There are nights in the forest of words

when I panic, every step into thicker darkness,

the only way out to write myself into a clearing,

which is silence.

Nights in the forest of words

when I'm afraid we won't hear each other

over clattering branches, over

both our voices calling.

In winter, in the hour

when the sun runs liquid then freezes,

caught in the mantilla of empty trees;

when my heart listens

through the cold stethoscope of fear,

your voice in my head reminds me

what the light teaches.

Slowly you translate fear into love,

the way the moon's blood is the sea.

Anne Michaels

Canadian Poet and Novelist

b. 1958

THE WAKING

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear,
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady, I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow,
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

1908-1963

THE JOY OF WRITING

Where is a written deer running through a written forest?

Whether to drink from written water

which will reflect its mouth like a carbon?

Why is it raising its head, does it hear something?

Propped on four legs borrowed from the truth

it pricks up its ears from under my fingers.

Silence  -  that word, too, is rustling on paper

and parts the branches caused by the word 'forest'.

Over a white page letters are ready to jump

and they may take a bad turn.

Sentences capable of bringing to bay,

and against which there is no help.

In a drop of ink there are quite a few

hunters squinting one eye,

ready to rush down a vertical pen,

to encircle the deer, to take aim.

They forget that this is not life here.

Other laws rule here, in black and white.

An instant will last as long as I desire.

It will allow a division into small eternities

each full of buckshot stopped in its flight.

If I command, nothing here will happen ever.

Not even a leaf will fall without my accord,

or a blade of grass bend under a dot of a hoof.

And so there is such a world

on which I impose my autonomous Fate?

A time which I bind with fetters of signs?

A life that at my command is perpetual?

The joy of writing.

A chance to make things stay.

A revenge of a mortal hand.

Wislawa Szymborska

1923

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996

translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

COLOGNE

The Coughers of Cologne

have joined forces with the Cologne Clappers

and established the Cough and Clap Society

a non-profit-making organisation

whose aim it is

to guarantee each concert-goer's right

 to cough and applaud.

Attempts by unfeeling artists or impresarios

to question such privileges

have led to a Coughers and Clappers initiative.

Members are required to applaud

immediately after sublime codas

and cough distinctly

during expressive silences.

Distinct coughing is of paramount importance

to stifle or muffle it

forbidden on pain of expulsion.

Coughs of outstanding tenacity

are awarded the Coughing Rhinemaiden

a handsome if slightly baroque appendage

to be worn dangling from the neck.

The C&C's recent merger

with the New York Sneezers

and the London Whistlers

raises high hopes

for Cologne's musical future.

by Alfred Brendel

with Richard Stokes

From Collected Poems by Alfred Brendel, 'Playing the Human Game'.

On 18th December 2008, the mighty Alfred Brendel gave his last concert at the Vienna Musikverein.





From Alfred Brendel - Life and Career

Writing is a constant source of inspiration and expression for Alfred Brendel. He has published two collections of articles and lectures: Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts Robson Books, (1976) and Music Sounded Out Robson Books, (1990) full of the same intellectual rigour and sly wit that he brings to his keyboard playing. Recently, all his essays have been gathered in “Alfred Brendel on Music” (new edition, JR Books 2007). A book of conversations with Martin Mayer, “The Veil of Order” (in the US: “Me of all people”) was published by Faber in 2002.

“One Finger Too Many”, has seen him depart from his usual role as a music essayist in a volume of absurd poetry. A second poetry selection in English is called “Cursing Bagels”. The literary press has praised his work on its own merit, setting aside his musical renown. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lauded his writings as "a collection of texts which can be numbered among the sparse ranks of genuinely comic literature and which make their author possibly 'immortal"'.

"I am not exclusively a musician, as the past few years have clearly shown," says Brendel. "I now lead a kind of double life. There has been an upsurge of my literary life with frequent poetry readings and Collected Poems in German and French. I am looking forward to my retirement from the stage to do more writing and lecturing”.

DON'T LET THAT HORSE

Marc Chagall
Russian Painter
1887-1985

Don't let that horse

                                                 eat that violin

                                  cried Chagall's mother

but he kept right on 

                    painting

And became famous

And kept on painting

The Horse With Violin In Mouth

                                 And when he finally finished it

                                 he jumped up upon the horse

and rode away

waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it 

to the first naked nude he ran across

                                 And there were no strings

attached.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

1919-

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, and educated at Columbia University and the Sorbonne.

He is identified with the Beat movement. He has said that much of his work was written by talking into a tape recorder and was designed to be read aloud.

LIKE RAIN IT SOUNDED TILL IT CURVED

Like Rain it sounded till it curved

And then I knew 'twas Wind -

It walked as wet as any Wave

But swept as dry as sand -

When it had pushed itself away

To some remotest Plain

A coming as of Hosts was heard

That was indeed the Rain -

It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools

It warbled in the Road -

It pulled the spigot from the Hills

And let the Floods abroad -

It loosened acres, lifted seas

The sites of Centres stirred

Then like Elijah rode away

Upon a Wheel of Cloud.

 Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

BIRTH OF THE FOAL

As May was opening the rosebuds,

elder and lilac beginning to bloom,

it was time for the mare to foal.

She'd rest herself, or hobble lazily

after the boy who sang as he led her

to pasture, wading through the meadow flowers.

They wandered back at dusk, bone-tired,

the moon perched on a blue shoulder of sky.

Then the mare lay down, 

sweating and trembling, on her straw in the stable.

The drowsy, heavy-bellied cows

surrounded her, waiting, watching, snuffing.

Later, when even the hay slept

and the shaft of the Plough pointed south,

the foal was born. Hours the mare

spent licking the foal with its glue-blind eyes.

And the foal slept at her side,

a heap of feathers ripped from a bed.

Straw never spread as soft as this.

Milk or snow never slept like a foal.

Dawn bounced up in a bright red hat,

waved at the world and skipped away.

Up staggered the foal,

its hooves were jelly-knots of foam.

Then day sniffed with its blue nose

through the open stable window, and found them -

the foal nuzzling its mother,

velvet fumbling for her milk.

Then all the trees were talking at once,

chickens scrabbled in the yard,

like golden flowers

envy withered the last stars.

Ferenc Juhasz

1928

translated from the Hungarian by David Wevill

PRAYER BFORE BIRTH

Children in war-torn Afghanistan

 I am not yet born; O hear me.
  Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
    club-footed ghoul come near me.

 I am not yet born, console me.
 I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
    with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
       on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

 I am not yet born; provide me
 With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
    to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
       in the back of my mind to guide me.

 I am not yet born; forgive me
 For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
    when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
       my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
          my life when they murder by means of my
             hands, my death when they live me.

 I am not yet born; rehearse me
 In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
    old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
       frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
           waves call me to folly and the desert calls
             me to doom and the beggar refuses
                my gift and my children curse me.

 I am not yet born; O hear me,
 Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
    come near me.

 I am not yet born; O fill me
 With strength against those who would freeze my
    humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
       would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
          one face, a thing, and against all those
             who would dissipate my entirety, would
                blow me like thistledown hither and
                   thither or hither and thither
                      like water held in the
                         hands would spill me.

 Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
 Otherwise kill me.


Louis MacNeice
1907-1963


This poem first appeared in MacNeice's 1944 collection, Springboard, and could be read autobiographically as a father's reaction to bringing a child into a world at war.


Nothing has changed for the children since he wrote these words.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

and sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

and having perhaps the better claim

because it was grassy and wanted wear;

though as for that, the passing there

had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

in leaves no feet had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less travelled by,

and that has made all the difference

Robert Frost 1874-1963 "The Road Not Taken' was inspired by Frost's friend,  the poet Edward Thomas, and was intended to be gently ironic of the habit of regret. Frost said of Thomas , "He more than anyone else was accessory to what I had done and was doing."

APRIL RISE

If ever I saw blessing in the air

I see it now in this still early day

Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips

Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round

Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod

Splutters with soapy-green and all the world

Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

If ever I heard blessing it is there

Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are

Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound

Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates, 

The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones,

While white as water by the lake a girl

Swims her green band among the gathered swans.

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick,

Dropping small flames to light the candled grass;

Now, as my low blood scales its second chance,

If ever world were blessed, now it is.

Laurie Lee

1914-1997

PAIN

Salvador Dali - Galatea of the Spheres

Luck has no songs, luck has no thoughts, luck has nothing.

Push your luck, so that she breaks, for luck is evil.

Luck comes softly in the whisper of morning among the sleeping bushes,

luck glides away in the light images of clouds over deep blue depths,

luck is the field that sleeps in the burning heat of noon, 

or the endless expanse of the sea under the piercing vertical rays,

luck is powerless, she sleeps and breathes and does not know anything . . . . 

Do you know pain? She is strong and big with secretly clenched fists.

Do you know pain? She is a hopeful smile with eyes red with tears.

Pain gives us all what we need -

she gives us the keys to the realm of death,

she pushes us through the gate when we still hesitate.

Pain baptizes the children and remains awake with the mothers

and forges all the golden wedding-rings.

Pain rules over everything, she smooths the brow of the thinker,

she clasps the jewel round the neck of the desired woman,

she stands by the door when a man is leaving his love . . . .

What else does pain still give to the ones she loves?

I do not know of more.

She gives pearls and flowers, she gives songs and dreams,

she gives us a thousand kisses which are all empty,

she gives us the only kiss that is true.

She gives us our strange souls and curious desires,

she gives to all the highest gain in life:

love, loneliness and the face of death.

Edith Sodergran

1892-1923

translated from Swedish

by Jaakko A. Ahokas

Edith Sodergran  was born in St Petersburg (Leningrad), where her parents belonged to the Swedish-speaking population of Finns. She was sent to a German school. After the Russian Revolution she and her mother took refuge in Finland, where they lived in extreme poverty. Her poems, published in Helsinki, were bitterly attacked by all but a few critics, and she was entirely isolated except for her attachment to Hagar Ollsen, a young woman writer who introduced her poems to other young Finnish poets. Sodergran died of tuberculosis and the effects of hunger. After her death she was hailed as a reformer of Swedish poetry in both Finland and Sweden, and her fame has increased with time.

AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION

Paul Nash  1889-1946
'Totes Meer'

  And death shall have no dominion.

Dead mean naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die windily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And Death shall have no dominion.

Dylan Thomas

1914-1953

FROM : THE AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

William Blake - The Ancient Of Days

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons

Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.

A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State.

A Horse misus’d upon the Road

Calls to Heaven for Human blood.

Each outcry of the hunted Hare

A fiber from the Brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,

A cherubim does cease to sing.

A truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats all the Lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for Joy and Woe;

Every Night and every Morn

Some to Misery are Born.

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight.

Some are Born to sweet delight,

Some are Born to Endless Night.  

William Blake

1757-1827

All 128 lines of this poem constitute a great manifesto of eco-philosophy two hundred years ahead of its time. Central to 'Auguries'  is Blake's lifelong struggle against the artificial division between the head and the heart, the sciences and the art.

THIS WORLD IS NOT CONCLUSION

This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond --

Invisible, as Music --

But positive, as Sound --

It beckons, and it baffles --

Philosophy -- don't know --

And through a Riddle, at the last --

Sagacity, must go --

To guess it, puzzles scholars --

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown --

Faith slips -- and laughs, and rallies --

Blushes, if any see --

Plucks at a twig of Evidence --

And asks a Vane, the way --

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit --

Strong Hallelujahs roll --

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul --

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

Dickinson described her art with typical, striking economy:

"If I read a book and  it makes my whole body so cold I know no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

BEST SOCIETY

'Der Schreiber'
Carl Spitzweg, 1808-1885

When I was a child, I thought,

Casually, that solitude

Never needed to be sought.

Something everybody had,

Like nakedness, it lay at hand,

Not specially right or specially wrong,

A plentiful and obvious thing

Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became 

At once more difficult to get

And more desired - though all the same

More undesirable; for what

You are alone has, to achieve

The rank of fact, to be expressed

In terms of others, or it's just

A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!

To love you must have someone else,

Giving requires a legatee,

Good neighbours need whole parishfuls

Of folk to do it on - in short,

Our virtues are all social; if,

Deprived of solitude, you chafe,

It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.

The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside

Ushers in evening rain. Once more

Uncontradicting solitude

Supports me on its giant palm;

And like a sea anemone

Or simple snail, there cautiously

Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Philip Larkin

1922-1985

IF THY SOUL IS A STRANGER TO THEE

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty,

Perceivest thou not how the god is in thine own house,

that thou wanderest from forest to forest so listlessly?

In thy home is the Truth. Go where thou wilt, 

to Benares or to Mathura;

If thy soul is a stranger to thee

The whole world is unhomely.

Kabir

Translated from the Hindi by

Rabindranath Tagore  

and revised by

Robert Bridges

Kabir, 1450?-1518

Indian Mystic who wrote in Hindi and Punjabi

BILL OF SALE

God help us, we have sold our souls, all that was best,

To an enterprise in the hands of the Receiver.

We've no dividends, or rights, for the price we paid.

Yet should our wills choose between this corrupt business

And a paradise to come, rest assured they'd want

The world we have now.

Abu-Al-'Ala' Al-Ma'Arri

973-1057

Blind Arabic Poet of Baghdad

"The more things change, the more they stay the same"
The Frenchman Alphonse Karr said this in 1849.
It is no less true now than it was then.

MIDWINTER WAKING

Paws there. Snout there as well. Mustiness. Mould.

Darkness; a desire to stretch, to scratch.

Then has the - ? then is it - ? Nudge the thatch,

Displace the stiffened leaves: look out. How cold,

How dried a stillness. Like a blade on stone,

A wind is scraping, first this way, then that.

Morning, perhaps; but not a proper one.

Turn. Sleep will unshell us, but not yet.

Philip Larkin

1922-1985

LIFE EPHEMERAL

We come only to sleep, we come only to dream,

It is not true, it is not true that we come to live on earth.

We come to be transformed into the spring grasses,

Our hearts come here to put on fresh green. They come here to open their petals.

Our body is a flower, it gives birth to flowers, and it withers.

Anonymous Nahuatl poem

Adapted from a Spanish version by J.M. Cohen

NEW EVERY MORNING

Every Day is a fresh beginning.

Listen my soul to the glad refrain.

And, spite of old sorrows

And older sinning,

troubles forecasted

And possible pain,

Take heart with the day and begin again.

Susan Coolidge

1835-1905

This poem seems to me eminently suitable to stand at the beginning of a new year, not only a new morning.

It has been used in a UK hospice to bring comfort to patients.

Susan Coolidge is the pseudonym of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in January 1835.